by David Hewson
‘Shocking,’ Aitchison said, shaking his head. ‘Truly shocking. Do you know that beast Ruskin stole my passport? Someone went round to my digs and talked their way in. Had to be him, not that I could prove it.’
‘Well.’ Sofia folded her floury arms. ‘We couldn’t walk out in broad daylight, could we? Even if we wanted to. Jerome was supposed to be dead. It was obvious what they’d think when they found out he wasn’t.’
‘What?’ Teresa asked.
‘That all this was my doing,’ Aitchison broke in. ‘That’s what that devil Ruskin wanted. Me in prison and Sofia back. It’s outrageous. Ask anyone in Cambridge. It was bad enough with all the nonsense that stupid girl Imogen made up about me.’
Sofia beamed at him and said, very seriously, ‘If weren’t for all that nonsense you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Correct,’ Aitchison agreed. ‘Nevertheless, I am an innocent injured party, twice over now . . .’
‘Ruskin wanted to kill you,’ Jason said with a very English bluntness.
They stared at him as if this were somehow unthinkable. The difference in years – he must have been almost three decades younger – seemed to make no difference. They had relied on Jason Cunningham absolutely. Teresa wondered if she could ever win such respect herself.
‘Wanted to kill both of you, I reckon,’ Jason went on. ‘He didn’t just make that poor man throw himself off the campanile. He murdered his wife. It’s all in the papers. They blamed that on Jerome too. I never told you.’
Sofia’s face had gone as white as her baker’s gown.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t see the point. Now . . .’
He fell silent.
‘Now what?’ Sofia asked.
‘Now he’s the one who’s dead,’ Jason said.
They seemed like two lost children, holding onto one another for comfort, for protection. Jason caught Teresa’s eye. She knew the half-jaundiced expression there and what it was saying. She’d seen the same look on her mother’s face. It meant, you see the problem? Whose is it now?
The bakery was deep beneath the earth. She took out her phone and knew there couldn’t possibly be a signal.
Teresa looked at Sofia and Jerome Aitchison then said, very slowly, very carefully, ‘I’m going to go outside now. I’m going to call the police. You have to tell them everything that’s happened. Jerome’s got nothing to be afraid of. I want you to talk to Chiara too. She’s been out of her mind with worry.’
‘Oh no,’ Sofia said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Teresa glanced at Jason, determined to let him know how grateful she was. The young man wasn’t even looking at her. He was checking the temperature on the oven.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ she added. ‘This could have turned out much . . . worse.’
Jason started pacing the bakery floor, looking concerned.
‘Bit of work to be done here before you two knock off,’ he said, casting a sly wink in her direction.
Distract them, she thought. Clever.
‘Phone.’ She held it up to show them.
Then she walked up the narrow worn steps, back towards the tiny deserted campiello. A part of her wanted to call Frascati first but that would be wrong. The madness, hers as much as anyone’s, was over. She had to do things in the proper order. That meant Paola Boscolo, and it would be a conversation she would relish.
The squalls had moved on. The sky had cleared. She could see stars and a sliver of moon. They reflected in the damp mirrored surface of the uneven brick courtyard, outlining the shape of the battered marble wellhead at its centre.
The sound of an outdoor disco floated over the rooftops, brash, crude rhythms, mood music for an asylum.
As she took the last step and walked out into the little square looking for a signal a small white dog came into view, trotting intently across the black cobblestones before it disappeared into the shadows to her right.
She froze, felt stupid and scared.
A hand fell on her shoulder. When she turned she found herself staring into the dead, cruel features of a shining ebony mask. An arm curved round her neck, sweaty, grubby fingers clambered over her mouth, stifling the scream there before it could be born.
Silk diamonds, green and yellow and red.
‘I’ll take that,’ the man in the harlequin suit snarled through the dead, frozen face as he seized the phone from her shaking fingers.
No bloodstains. No sign of anxiety, let alone any visible wound.
Imagine.
One stray guess as his hand clawed across her mouth.
It was the trick from the piazza, all over again. The body in the alley was someone else. A useful stranger, just like Luisa Cammarota. Camilla was the bait. Some unfortunate stranger was the dummy, the feint that let him watch from the sidelines then follow her all the way to Sofia.
Something cold and metallic touched her face. He took his hand away. The gun was so hard against her cheek it hurt.
‘You think you’re so damned clever,’ the voice behind the mask spat at her. ‘Just like she said. Some stupid little bird. You throw down a few crumbs. It follows the trail. Then . . .’
He whipped the weapon viciously at her head and Teresa Lupo found herself tumbling down to the cold black ground, too shocked, too short of breath even to scream, a darkness, close and personal, closing in.
She fell on her hands and knees. The cobblestones bit and grazed her skin beneath the heavy winter clothes as she tumbled sideways. The wall intervened. Her head fetched up hard against the damp crumbling brick.
For a moment she lost consciousness. When she looked up he’d ripped off the ebony mask and his face was in hers. She could feel the heat of his breath, smell the stink of him.
He didn’t look like anyone she knew. Fifty or so. Dark eyes. Sallow skin. Ordinary features twisted with fury. The universal angry, crazy man. No one remarkable at all.
Some dim, half-turning thought told her it was bad she’d seen him. Bad that he didn’t care.
His left arm grabbed hers and she was dragged to her feet. They were back at the doorway. The weapon gestured down the steps.
From below, far away, she could make out happy voices over his laboured breathing. Jason’s raw Italian as he laughed down there, ordering the two of them to do something to the ovens. Sofia’s light musical tones saying something in response. A querulous, edgy reply from the man called Jerome Aitchison.
The harlequin’s fingers gripped Teresa’s shoulder-length brown hair, held it tight, wrenched her round to look at him. The gun poked towards her eye.
‘One word,’ he murmured.
He mouthed something she’d heard earlier, screamed down the phone line.
Bang.
Pinning her hard against the wall, he shouted down the staircase, ‘Police! This is Inspector Galbani from the Questura. Signora Lupo is with me. You must leave now please. For your own safety. We will transport you. Come.’
His voice was so different, so full of authority and age, that the shift, the skill in his sudden change of character, left her mind reeling. It was as if he was more than one man. Several, all in the same skin.
She wriggled in his arms. The gun came down heavily on her temple and the force and pain brought her to her knees again.
‘Please!’ he barked. ‘There is a launch for you. Signora Bianchi. Signor Aitchison. We need your assistance.’
The man sounded like just about every police inspector she’d ever met. Calm voice, full of authority. Confident. Expectant.
People did what he wanted. Sofia had once, until something, some realization dawned.
She tried to struggle, to scream. The gun dashed down once more. Another savage blow. The darkness pooled in around her. When she came to she was on the ground, face against the wall, too confused to say a thing.
Jason came out first, Sofia and Aitchison close behind. Without warning the harlequin fired and she watched in horror as the young Englishman fell to the ground cl
utching his stomach, moaning, rolling sideways into the darkness.
The sound he made was so quiet she couldn’t help but think he didn’t want to cause any trouble.
Teresa was trying to move again at that moment, but it didn’t matter. The harlequin was on Sofia already, tearing off her white baker’s cap, dragging her hair free, winding his fist into the long, tumbling locks.
It was all so rapid Aitchison had no time to react. By the time the Englishman was moving towards her the gun was pressed into Sofia’s cheek. The look in the eyes of the man in the suit of diamonds stopped him as he reached out to help.
Aitchison stood there, a modest, middle-aged foreigner, hands out, pleading, lost. Teresa got to her feet, felt so dizzy she had to cling to the wall to stay upright. There wasn’t a sound from Jason, invisible in the darkness beyond the alcove.
‘Shoot me,’ he pleaded, taking a step closer. ‘Not her. Blame me. I don’t care. I don’t . . .’
The gun went up. A second shot rose towards the moon.
There were cops nearby, she thought. Someone had to hear.
‘Me!’ Aitchison yelled, and stood there as the harlequin took a vicious swipe at his head, the barrel colliding with his temple, sending him reeling.
‘Tell him,’ the man with the gun ordered, racking his hand through her long blonde hair, pulling it so tight she began to whimper. ‘Tell him!’
Sofia clawed away from him, got a little space between them, caught her breath.
‘Tell him what?’
‘The child! Our child.’
Tears started in Sofia’s eyes. She didn’t want to speak, to acknowledge him.
He put the barrel of the pistol straight against her head and bellowed, ‘Say it.’
‘Michael! Michael!’
There was fury in Sofia’s voice and that was a surprise.
‘Tell him!’
‘Jerome knows!’ Then more quietly, ‘Of course he does. I told him. He knows! So do you. The baby was dead.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘They told us that. All those years ago. They had no choice. Any more than I did. The doctors insisted––’
‘Lies, lies, lies . . .’ Ruskin snarled and dragged her round one full circle by her hair.
She was screaming, crying, indignant.
‘No,’ Sofia cried, stumbling to her knees. ‘It’s the truth. And––’
He threw her to the cobblestones. She shrieked with pain, then looked up at him, defiant.
‘You should have loved me then. I needed that. Not your hatred. Your insanity. It was not my fault.’
The gun pointed straight at her head. Teresa was ready to launch herself at this man. Then Jerome Aitchison got in the way, trying to step between the two of them, hand held out, pleading.
‘It was a tragedy, man,’ Aitchison said. ‘An accident. Nothing anyone could change.’
‘I can change what I like!’
Crouched on the ground in a heap, not far from the stricken Jason, Sofia leaned back, closed her eyes briefly, turned her face to the night sky. Then she looked into the harlequin’s face, with pity, not fear.
‘No, Michael,’ she said. ‘You think you can. But you’re wrong. You were deluded then. You’re still deluded now. This has to stop. Believe me. I’m so, so sorry . . .’
Teresa’s heart stopped. The grey barrel of the weapon was so close it almost touched Sofia’s forehead.
‘And I am not afraid of you,’ Sofia said simply, staring into his eyes. ‘Not any more.’
There was a shout across the campiello, a loud voice, full of authority. Words Teresa couldn’t understand. A foreign language, unrecognizable.
Not cops. It didn’t sound right.
‘Too late, too late!’ the harlequin bellowed.
A shadow flew out of the darkness. As she watched a shiny ebony cane with a silver handle came down and knocked the pistol out of his hands. The gun scuttered across the black cobblestones into the gloom. Teresa crossed the alcove and as she did the cane flashed again, more than once, striking the man in the diamond suit, sending him flying to the ground.
She clambered across the cold, wet stones and got to Jason. He was conscious, just, clutching his side, panting. In the scant moonlight his eyes were full of fear. A dark pool of blood was seeping through his fingers.
Teresa put a hand to the young man’s face and said, to no one in particular, ‘I don’t know who the hell you are. But this man’s been shot. I need help. An ambulance.’
When she looked back the Plague Doctor’s blank mask was staring towards her. He was still two strides away. The cane remained hard against the harlequin’s chest. Not enough to keep a man in check, she thought. Not in itself. There was something more here. Some other form of authority.
‘You’re a doctor,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten?’
‘He still needs an ambulance. Call someone. Jerome!’
Aitchison was fumbling at a mobile phone already.
The masked face twisted again, became quizzical and ever more birdlike.
‘They will come. He will live,’ he said.
A long pause and then he turned to the figure beneath him, asking in a tone of deep disappointment and distaste, ‘Are there so many things you don’t understand?’
‘Ta gueule,’ the harlequin shouted. ‘Shut your mouth!’
She could not begin to guess how these two knew each other.
‘Your mouth!’ the man on the ground yelled again, and raised a hand, made the sign of a weapon, pulling the trigger, aiming at the white ghostly mask.
‘Would you shoot me?’ the Plague Doctor asked. ‘Here.’
He reached into his cloak and withdrew a small black pistol which he threw to the man in the suit of diamonds.
Ruskin seized the weapon, pointed it up towards the stars and the reticent moon, directly at the man above him.
‘Do it,’ the Plague Doctor ordered. ‘Go on. Is that how this journey ends?’
‘The child was mine!’
‘The child was lost! Go on. Do it! If you own the power of life or death, use it on me. Not them.’
Teresa could sense there was something pathetic, tragic between these two men, even if she could not begin to understand its origins.
The figure on the ground hesitated, shrank visibly as she watched.
‘This journey is so long . . .’ the man in the suit of diamonds said in a voice scarred with self-pity and hatred.
‘Courage,’ the voice behind the mask snapped back. The word sounded more French than English. ‘Where did it go?’
‘Don’t talk to me of courage. Not after all these damned years. You . . .’
There was an incomprehensible howl, a shriek in a language she couldn’t follow though it was a scream so full of loathing and despair she found it hard not to be moved, just a little.
Then she saw the weapon turning slowly in the hands of the man crouched on the grimy cobblestones, rising to his own temple, shakily but with a clear intent.
‘Oh no,’ she shouted, scrambling quickly across, ignoring the hurt and the bruises, grabbing the gun for herself, tearing it from his fingers.
He was weak, confused, broken. The weapon felt cold and foreign and she realized she could never remember how to check whether the safety catch was on or not.
She kept the little black pistol on him though.
‘I want to see you in court,’ she said. ‘Jerome?’
‘Yes?’
A pale, determined face came into view.
‘Take off that apron and tie his hands behind his back.’
Aitchison ripped off his bib, got down and wound the ties round the harlequin’s wrists. The man didn’t protest, didn’t struggle. Something here had affected him, and it had to come from the words of the man in the long white mask.
‘Where the hell is this ambulance?’ she demanded, going back to Jason. The young Englishman’s eyes were fading. He was close to losing consciousness.
‘Coming, they said,’ Aitchison re
plied.
‘Coming,’ she repeated.
There was movement from behind. When she looked back she saw the tall figure in the black cloak turning away, as if ready to leave.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she demanded.
The beak rotated sideways again. Something had joined him. It sat pale and white and still by his feet. The little volpino.
She held out the gun, not steadily but it was the best she could do.
‘Stay there.’
But he was going already. The dog rose nonchalantly on its haunches with him and began to trot steadily towards the exit of the campiello as if it knew the way home.
‘I said . . .’
He looked back at her, removed the broad buckled black hat, bowed quickly, then began to stride away.
The gun waved and she shouted across the shadowy campiello, ‘For God’s sake! Please! Arnaud!’
Her words had no effect.
Jason groaned. As she watched a light seemed to go out in his eyes.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘Not now.’
Some memories kicked in, of classes in Rome, of emergency work in the hospital there in San Giovanni. Before she knew it she was ripping Sofia’s apron to shreds with her bare hands, going to work with it on the wounds, doing what she could. Not thinking about anything but the injured man in front of her because nothing else mattered.
After a minute or so she bent down and listened to his breathing. It was shallow and arrhythmic. But it was there.
Then came a commotion from the alley outside and two men raced through. They wore paramedic uniforms and carried a stretcher and medical bags. Behind was a woman in blue who identified herself as a police doctor. She talked quickly, knowledgeably, assumed control.
They’d been prepared for injuries, Teresa guessed. Jason was lucky there at least.
She stared at the narrow passage that led back to the arcades of the Rialto. The Plague Doctor would be one more figure in a cloak now, darting through the February shadows.
Sofia was by her side. The medics looked professional, well-equipped. They had Jason on a stretcher already, and were getting ready to move.